Men on Boats

NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS PICK

The cast, the director and the design team... delightfully recreate the rhythms, rush and terror of life on the water.

And while the stage they inhabit is as small as most studio apartments, they are improbably able to make us believe they are indeed roaming wide-open spaces where it’s all too easy for a man, of any persuasion, to get lost forever.

That’s why what [Lin Manuel] Miranda and Backhaus have done is revolutionary. By casting a Latino man as George Washington or a woman as John Powell, these artists aren’t just giving much-needed work to some talented performers. They are also reaching out to today’s audiences, today’s New Yorkers, who are not all white or all male.